


See You Again

by MidnightWolf697



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, phantom limb syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 09:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4215921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightWolf697/pseuds/MidnightWolf697
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve knew it wouldn’t be easy finding Bucky.  He hadn’t expected it to be.  But what he hadn’t expected was that Bucky would be the one to find him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the title is from Wiz Kalifa's song "See You Again". Listening to that song makes me think of Steve and Bucky. This story was started for the writing prompt of the line "Who are you again?". It'll come into play a little later.  
> Enjoy! :)

Steve knew it wouldn’t be easy finding Bucky. He hadn’t expected it to be. He’d looked into every lead Natasha had given him, exhausting them after only a few months. At first he wanted to blame the leads; they had to have been incomplete. But Natasha was thorough in her work, and so was he. Eventually, Steve had to face the reality that maybe Bucky didn’t want to be found. Maybe he hadn’t been so reachable after all. Yet not matter how much Steve tried to ~~lie to~~ convince himself otherwise, there was no denying the hint of recognition he’d seen in Bucky’s eyes. The James Barnes he knew was still in there, albeit masked by the Winter Soldier. Steve expected it to be hard finding Bucky, but what he hadn’t expected was that Bucky would be the one to find him.  
  
After the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., and after Steve had returned from his fruitless efforts, he had no choice but to go back to his apartment. The space had remained untouched since Fury had been shot; apparently the building manager’s insurance policy didn’t cover bullet holes left by an assassin. So, with help from Sam, Steve began to repair the apartment.  
  
The first couple days were spent cleaning up debris from the wall and removing the layer of dust that had settled over everything. After that had been finished they turned their attention to the holes in the wall. A couple agents from S.H.I.E.L.D. had come by the apartment complex the night after Fury was shot and fixed any spots on the outside that gave evidence as to what had transpired. The only thing indicative of Fury’s presence in the apartment that day was a dark spot on the hardwood floor where he had lain. The agents had done everything short of tearing up the boards to destroy any traces of Fury’s DNA. In the end, all Steve could do was throw a rug over it until he could find wood that matched the rest.  
  
It took a little over two weeks for Steve and Sam to get everything put back together. Once that was finished, they could finally return to having some sense of normalcy in their lives. Sam held meetings at the VA again; the people there needed him and couldn’t leave them – not again. Steve had even attended some after being persuaded by Sam. It was after one of these meetings that he had returned to his apartment and received an unexpected surprise.  
  
Steve shut the door behind him, setting the lock and dropping his keys into a bowl on a table in the hall – something that had become routine since being thawed out. When he turned into the apartment, he hadn’t expected to see the soft glow of the floor lamp coming from the living room. He knew it hadn’t been on when he’d left.  
  
He wished he had the gun Clint had given him when they’d met up a month ago. “Just in case,” the archer had said. Now that S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone, they all felt vulnerable – Steve more so since he’d lost his shield over the Potomac. In some ways it had been an extension of himself. An extension he’d thrown away for his best friend.  
  
But all of that was said and done. The only priority right now was finding out who was in the apartment with him and, if they weren’t friendly, figuring out how he was going to defend himself. The gun from Clint was sitting in the nightstand next to his bed and whoever was there could’ve easily found it had they looked through the apartment.  
  
Steve thinks for a second that he could take them down with his speed and brute strength, but does he really want to stare down the barrel of a gun held by the person waiting for him to turn the corner? Not really. Then again, if it was someone trying to hurt him, then surely they wouldn’t have turned the light on. They wouldn’t have made their presence known until it was too late for him to react.  
  
He doubted it was Natasha; he’d talked to her over the phone just the other day, and she was still in New York, forging a new cover with help from Stark and Banner. She would’ve called him beforehand anyway – Clint was the same way. That just left one other person: Fury.  
  
Steve hoped to God he was right as he stepped out from behind the wall. “I don’t have to worry about you getting shot again do I, Nick?” Except it wasn’t Nick sitting in the chair. It was pain, and regret, and why-the-hell-didn’t-I-go-back-to-find-him. It was one who he’d promised _‘til the end of the line’_. “Bucky.”  
  
“Hi Steve,” Bucky said, looking up at his friend with eyes that held nothing but sadness and uncertainty. His voice was so much quieter than Steve remembered. The blond’s eyes were drawn to the large disk propped up at his friend’s side, the bright red, white, and blue a welcome sight. Bucky had had his shield all this time.  
  
Bucky picked up the shield, flesh and bone fingers running over the worn leather straps. “I found this on the river bank a little ways from–” He paused. _‘Where I pulled you out of the water.’_ “Where you fell.”  
  
He stood up and took a few steps toward Steve, holding the shield out to him. “I thought you’d want it back.”  
  
Steve took it, and the weight of the vibranium on his arm felt foreign. He looked back up at the shell of his best friend, blue eyes flitting to the scraggly 5 o’clock shadow and the heavy dark circles under his eyes. In all honesty, Bucky looked like he'd been to hell and back.  
  
“Um, I don’t remember a lot from before,” Bucky said, shifting his weight from side to side. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously with his metal hand after tucking back a few strands of hair that had come loose from his ponytail. “And I was hoping that maybe you could…help me?”  
  
Steve nodded and set down the shield, taking a step forward and closing the gap between them as he hugged the brunet. He felt Bucky tense up at first, and was about to let go when the other man leaned into the hug, wrapping his own arms around Steve's torso. He couldn't help but smile.  
  
“I’ve missed you, Buck.”


	2. Chapter 2

_"I'm with you till the end of the line."_  
  
The words echoed in Bucky's head as he'd wandered through the exhibit at the Smithsonian. He knew that phrase, and the air of familiarity was killing him because _he couldn't remember._  
  
He didn't know how much time he'd spent staring at the picture of the man they called James Barnes. The wave of uneasiness that crashed over him with every step was drowning him, constricting every breath he took. He was looking at _himself_ for god's sake; someone who had supposedly died over seventy years ago! It was all too much: the crowd, the noise, the man's face - no, _his_ face - and he got out of the museum as fast as he could.  
  
He'd gone back to the motel he was staying at. It was a rundown little place with too-thin walls that peeled brown paint and too-soft beds that either poked you with their springs or made you feel like you were sleeping on a cloud. Bucky didn't know why, but he hated how the bed felt. He always felt like he was falling, and that scared him enough to jolt him awake more than once throughout the night. He preferred feeling the springs poking into his back because at least he knew he was grounded.  
  
When it wasn't the bed keeping him up, it was the man upstairs screwing whoever he'd brought back that night. The ceiling constantly creaked, and Bucky lost track of how many times he'd prayed it would just cave in and put him, and hopefully them, out of this misery. Other times it was a dull aching pain that radiated from his arm - his _left_ arm. But it couldn’t be because there was only metal, not real flesh and bone. The only sensation he could feel through it was pressure and yet every so often he swore it burned. Usually he could deal with high levels of pain while still being able to function normally, but even this was a little more than he could handle. It only added to the irritability he felt from what had to be withdrawal from whatever drugs Hydra had pumped through his system over the years.  
  
Then there were the nightmares.  
  
He didn't recall having them when he'd been under the control of Hydra and Senator Pierce. He'd had flashes of memories he couldn't quite place, and faces of people who he couldn't give names. It wasn't until he had gotten free that they began to terrorize him.  
  
In his dreams he saw men being blown up and shot by invisible assailants. Familiar faces fell one by one at his feet, adding to the bloodbath around him. His eyes would clench shut as the familiar spark of pain rushed up his arm, and it took all the willpower he had not to cry out. The pain would subside into a feeling of weightlessness that left his dazed for just mere seconds before plunging him into cold that seeped all the way into his bones.  
  
More often than not he'd wake up in a sweat, shaking uncontrollably as he tried to make sense of where he was. He was terrified of waking back up in one of Hydra's labs, surrounded by men in white lab coats wearing wicked grins. Needless to say, white had become his least favorite color, and the one he’d come to associate with pain.  
  
Despite the lack of sleep, he didn't spend his days hauled up in the motel room. Oh no. He had far better things to do.  
  
All of Hydra's operatives had been exposed in the SHIELD information dump. The federal authorities had managed to catch quite a few of them but there were still those who had managed to evade capture, and _he hunted them down._ They were his new mission – the ones who truly deserved to die.  
  
All the while Bucky knew he was being tracked down by Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. He had been watching them that day in the cemetery. He'd seen Fury and known right away that the mission had been a failure. It wasn’t his first; there had been others in the past. He’d be distracted at the wrong time by a fleeting memory and miss his opportunity. His handlers would be angry and he’d be threatened (and often punished) with another memory wipe. Now that those people were gone, he was glad to have failed.  
  
To Bucky, most people he came across outside of Hydra were associated with the word "mission". He was conditioned to think that he wasn't killing heedlessly, but simply completing a mission. D.C. was no exception. Except after his trip to the museum he began conditioning himself to associate a different word with Steve Rogers.  
  
_Friend._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left Kudos! I do have more chapters planned, so the story is not over.


End file.
